No bull for the Bull City

Durham's straight-talking new manager wins accolades

DURHAM -- Tom Bonfield has been Durham's city manager only since August, but he is already stamping his brand on City Hall.

Fiscal discipline, cooperation, strategic planning, set priorities, saying 'No' -- those are all keys to the way he works. And on Thursday he announced his plan for reorganizing city government so it "can do the things it needs to do."

"I think the organization, for a variety of reasons, is not a well-oiled machine," Bonfield told The News & Observer this month, reflecting on his first three months as city manager. "So a big part of what I want to spend time on is getting the organization tuned up."

Bonfield's reorganization plan aligns the city's 23 departments into three teams, each under a deputy city manager. He said reorganizing will probably lead to some jobs and divisions moving to new departments, but not to a larger staff.

In the immediate future, Bonfield said top priorities should be fiscal management "based on economic reality," improving completion of capital projects such as street resurfacing, and streamlining procedures for development review so that the city does not impede economic progress.

Bonfield's young administration is informed by more than 30 years' experience in city government, 23 of them as a city manager.

Before coming to Durham, he managed Pensacola, Fla., for 10 years -- seeing that city through a disastrous hurricane, a statewide tax revolt and a long-in-coming waterfront redevelopment.

Previously, he was manager in the Tampa suburb of Temple Terrace, where he was praised for building citizens' trust in their government while winning a reputation as sharp, hard-working and straight-shooting.

Bonfield is direct when he talks about what Durham needs at City Hall.

"The big picture is that I don't think the city has had a long, even mid-term, financial plan and put the decisions that are made on an annual basis in the context of what [they] mean long-term," he said.

For example, Durham's Capital Improvement Program for 2009-14 has 254 items, ranging from park improvements to making government buildings accessible to the disabled to rehabilitating the water system.

"There's no financing around it," he said of the program. "It has some money available, but nowhere near enough. ... So in essence it's not a six-year capital plan, it's a six-year wish list."

Neighborhoods first

Bonfield also wants to make sure the city puts neighborhoods and communities ahead of the organizational chart.

When residents of the Boone Court area raised concerns about a street barricade, Bonfield viewed the problem not as a police department issue or a public works department issue, but a neighborhood problem where residents were worried about their security.

"So we engaged the community," Bonfield said, to "figure out what are the dynamics we really need to address."

As a result, specific problems were identified, assigned for departments' action and the neighbors reassured. That's a departure from conventional practice, Bonfield said.

"We have to change the philosophy of how we approach neighborhoods," he said, "particularly in the distressed neighborhoods."

A heart for baseball

Bonfield is a native of St. Petersburg, Fla., where his 86-year-old mother still resides. He earned a bachelor's degree in accounting at St. Leo University in Florida. He won a scholarship to attend law school, but instead answered the draft by the New York Yankees and played one season for a Yankee farm team in Oneonta, N.Y.

Cut during spring practice in his second year, Bonfield went on to earn an MBA from the University of South Florida and then to work as a city administrator in Temple Terrace where he worked his way up to manager, a job he held for 13 years.